


some days, someday

by SalviaOfficinalis



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: ...is it suicidal if you're already dead?, ...it's complicated, ...why is that a tag??? lol, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves Friendship, Ben Hargreeves Deserves Better, Ben Hargreeves Gets a Hug, Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Ben Hargreeves-centric, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Ghost Ben Hargreeves, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, No Incest, POV Ben Hargreeves, Suicidal Thoughts, The Umbrella Academy (TV) Season 2 Spoilers, as is standard for pretty much all TUA fic, but uh this is a ben & klaus fic, gosh darn it TUA fandom, in this house we love and appreciate all hargreeves siblings equally, no beta we die like ben, one ghosty superhero would very much like to pass onto the afterlife please and thank you, so sorry to everyone else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26475022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalviaOfficinalis/pseuds/SalviaOfficinalis
Summary: Some days, Ben hates Klaus.(Just a little.)(Some days, Ben wants to scream and shout and destroy, and his image flickers like static, blood spreading across his clothing in long, bloody ribbons that remind him too much of tentacles emerging from his stomach that tear his hoodie into pieces, and Ben with it, even as he screams, and screams, and screams-)Some days, Ben looks at the rabid ghosts that follow Klaus around.His brother ignores them completely, high on drugs until Klaus’s words start to slur together and he stumbles around with pupils blown wide, unable to even see or hear them.Ben can’t do that. Ben’s insubstantial, a ghost, little more than a hallucination of Klaus’s mind because he can’t interact with anything, talk to anyone, and if Klaus wasn’t there, Ben doesn’t think he would know he was real-(Ben doesn’t like to think about the other ghosts. Not when it’s all too easy to imagine himself as one of them.)Or: Ben gets trapped as a ghost. This is not entirely anyone's fault, but it's hard not to assign blame.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 43





	some days, someday

**Author's Note:**

> Me, stuffing this fic full of my TUA ghost mechanic headcanons: no, this is all true, why do you ask?

Some days, Ben hates Klaus.

(Just a little.)

He’s had time, now, to accept it. It was worse, _then_. Before Ben had made his peace with his inability to reach the afterlife, whatever it might have been. Before Klaus had broken down, drunk and sobbing, apologizing to Ben more than he had thought was physically possible.

Not that he ever confirmed it to Klaus, but Klaus, despite whatever other flaws he might have, can be too clever for his own good sometimes.

Little things still set Ben off, though. When Klaus ends up in the hospital after an overdose, lying unconscious on the bed, when Ben stares up at the sterile ceiling and the fluorescent white light set into it and just _pretend_ , even for a moment, right up until the moment that Klaus wakes up.

Ben doesn’t know whether to be grateful or to despise his brother for pulling him out of his trance.

(Some days, Ben wants to scream and shout and destroy, and his image flickers like static, blood spreading across his clothing in long, bloody ribbons that remind him too much of tentacles emerging from his stomach that tear his hoodie into pieces, and Ben with it, even as he screams, and screams, and _screams_ -)

Some days, Ben looks at the rabid ghosts that follow Klaus around.

His brother ignores them completely, high on drugs until Klaus’s words start to slur together and he stumbles around with pupils blown wide, unable to even see or hear them.

Ben can’t do that. Ben’s insubstantial, a ghost, little more than a hallucination of Klaus’s mind because he can’t interact with anything, talk to anyone, and if Klaus wasn’t there, Ben doesn’t think he would know he was real-

(Ben doesn’t like to think about the other ghosts. Not when it’s all too easy to imagine himself as one of them.)

* * *

Someday, maybe Ben will be able to talk to Klaus candidly without feeling as if he’s dancing through a minefield filled with shards of invisible, broken glass. But as it stands, talking to him is an exercise in avoiding triggers that might set Klaus off while simultaneously playing an intricate game of give and take.

He’s a master of evasion, of pulling away from topics he dislikes with a jaunty wave of his left hand and a quick turn to the side. Klaus doesn’t want to talk about ghosts. Or their family. Or his drugs. Or anything, really, that could actually be useful or interesting to Ben.

It’s cruel, but Ben wishes just about anyone besides Klaus had been the one who could see ghosts.

They were friends. Before. When Ben had ignored Klaus’s drugs and Klaus had ignored Ben’s powers, and it was the two of them against the world and against their father because no one else was ever going to be there for them.

(If they hadn’t been so close, would Klaus have brought Ben back? And selfishly, if the answer to that would be _no_ , Ben wishes Klaus had hated him.)

But now, Klaus can’t ignore Ben’s powers, not when they killed him. And Ben can’t ignore Klaus’s drugs, can’t ignore the fact that his brother is _throwing his life away_ , the one that Ben doesn’t even have-

Ben would give up a lot of things to be in Klaus’s position. Alive, that is. Breathing. Walking, talking, acknowledged by the world around him as someone who exists. It’s almost physically painful to watch Klaus destroy himself, uncaring of the gift he has.

Klaus is wasting his life, and Ben thinks that his earlier thoughts were wrong. He would give up _anything_ to be standing where Klaus is, _alive_.

(He resents his brother, oh, so much, some days.)

* * *

Once, he ran into a new ghost, stumbling out of the smoking, crumpled wreckage of a car and staring around, wide-eyed. Ben had still been young, himself, naïve and three years buried. And he had thought he could help, he really did.

They talked. For hours and hours, but Ben never begrudged the time spent. He understood all too well that fear, the need for intelligent contact, just to prove that he was _real_ , a person and not some imaginary figment.

(Out of all the things Klaus has ever done, Ben thinks this one might be the most unforgivable.)

It’s slow. The deterioration, that is. Ben doesn’t even notice the first signs until a month in when the other ghost’s chest just _crumples_. It caves in under the force of an invisible steering wheel, careening out of control at a lethal velocity until his friend finally dies from the damage.

Or, well, _died_ , that is.

This, Ben knows, is the first sign of the regression into a more primitive state, like the feral ghosts that stalk the streets. Matching their appearance to their perception of themselves – dead. Because Ben might know, logically, that he’s dead… but he’s still alive, in a way. He talks to Klaus, he walks right into movie theaters and nabs an empty seat for himself, and he might not be alive, but Ben doesn’t feel _dead_ , either.

The moment passes. Ben’s friend doesn’t remember the incident. But slowly, ever so surely, the ghost is beginning to crack, in the way that only a ghost can, wandering amongst the living unseen, the only company available insensate and more than slightly insane.

Ben tries. It’s not enough. Ben’s a ghost as well, and it’s simply _not the same_ as interacting with the living, the only thing that’s kept him going all these years, as Ben is aware of too well.

He goes to Klaus. He pleads with him, begs him, just to _help_ , to offer a single conversation, an acknowledgment that the other ghost _exists_ -

Klaus doesn’t help. Oh, he covers it up in a pretty veneer of lies and excuses, but Ben knows his brother.

(Ben, after all, has only stuck to him like a leech for the past three years, terrified of losing his last link to the living, leaving for a few hours at most, and only when Klaus is somewhere that Ben _knows_ he’ll still be in several hours. Those times are far and few between.)

Klaus is terrified. Terrified of the ghosts, with their grasping hands and howling screeches, that will torment him the minute he goes off the drugs and alcohol-

And in order to see Ben’s friend, Klaus would have to be sober.

He doesn’t do it.

So Ben tries, and they talk and go to movies, and Ben even risks abandoning Klaus for half a week, dipping in and out of birthday parties and nightclubs and birdwatching at a local park.

(Years later, he’ll look back and wonder if he just made it worse, forcing the other ghost to be around people that couldn’t see the two of them, slowly reinforcing the fact that ghosts were completely disconnected from the living world.)

The next time Ben sees a new ghost, he ignores it – because they’re not really people, not in the way Ben is, not in the way that human contact provides – and returns to chatting with Klaus, no matter how much it pleads or begs to just _talk to it_.

(Klaus, Ben thinks, has influenced him in a lot of ways. Most of them aren’t for the better.)

* * *

(In the week that follows the first and last time Ben ever tried to befriend another ghost, he tries to reach out towards the light. He tries to capture that ephemeral feeling, that sense of peace, perfect happiness.

It never works.)

* * *

Some (most) days, the ghosts follow Ben around.

It’s not as good as talking to Klaus, talking to a living person, but they can tell that Ben is sane, can see them, can’t shut them out in the way that Klaus does.

Any ghost who’s been around Ben’s brother for longer than an hour tends to realize pretty quickly that Klaus can’t hear or see them. The ones who stay around for half that again figure out that Ben, _Ben_ can very much see and hear them, is a ghost himself, the only one who can talk to Klaus.

They pester him. Constantly. Solve my murder, tell my children I love them, find my wedding ring, get revenge on that cheating spouse, take care of my beloved pet, make sure my cousin inherits my house and not those horrible brats of mine-

Ghosts are insubstantial. Incorporeal, unable to interact with the physical world. But they aren’t physical, themselves, and they’re fully capable of touching _each other_.

Most of them don’t try to touch him. They used to. Now, they don’t.

They have some sort of way to communicate with each other, Ben thinks. The other ghosts, that is. Otherwise, how would the new ones that crowd Klaus, surround him, no matter that he can’t sense them with drugs pumping through his system, know to avoid Ben?

Some days, a particularly foolish (or brave), new ghost forces its way towards Ben.

The other ghosts, the older ones, the ones who’ve been with Ben and Klaus since the beginning, or near to it, the ones who know better, are always quick to tug it back with grasping hands on the foolish ghost’s shoulders.

(Maybe the ghosts are not terribly intelligent, but they still have some sense of self-preservation, and when the _thing_ that hides inside his skin gets going, it doesn’t stop to only take out the attackers, but it instead shreds anything within reach, unwilling to stop unless Ben reins it in or it there’s nothing left alive, and Ben…

Ben hasn’t been able to do that since the day before he died.)

* * *

(There’s one other way to stop it. For all its power, its only way to access the world around it is through a portal in a fragile human body. It’s smart enough to know this, to protect its human from things that might mean harm, but in the end, its bloodthirsty instincts will override rationality. Leave it to take out the human-

-And the things within go down too.)

* * *

Some days, Ben climbs up onto rooftops with practiced ease and wonders if it would hurt.

If he jumped, that is.

Probably not. Ghosts can’t pass through objects, but objects can pass through _them_ just fine. He’s sure that there’s some science-y explanation about relative velocity or something, or, at least, as scientific as _ghosts_ can really be, but the mechanics of it aren’t terribly interesting to Ben.

All of that only goes to say that Ben would probably get to experience a thrilling, heart-stopping half-a-second of falling before he hit the pavement and got back up and walked off. As far as he can tell, the only thing that can really kill a ghost is… well, a ghost.

The probability of that happening is beyond infinitesimal, though. His chances of finding a ghost that has a weapon are minimal, to begin with, unless Klaus gets into the habit of wandering into the sites of past violent battles. Either that, or Ben could stumble across a ghost whose weapon was so deeply integral to their identity that it ended up in the ghost-afterlife with them, but he highly doubts it.

And even assuming that he could find one in the first place, they’d have to surprise him and kill him before the thing inside of him could realize and protect Ben, which is the main reason that Ben can’t just provoke another ghost until it snaps his neck.

(On one of his… _worse_ days, Ben had gone down to Klaus’s mausoleum and released the creature under his skin.

He expected it to tear him apart.

It didn’t.

Instead, Ben woke up to stone walls and not a single living soul in sight. Or any dead souls, as it were.)

Someday, Ben would like to find a ghost that could kill him.

* * *

(After the mausoleum, he’d thought he was trapped, that whatever Klaus had done to pull him back from the afterlife prevented him from dying for a second time.

Then, he looked around him and saw a ghost with half their head missing, another with a gouge in their neck, and realized that ghosts couldn’t die of the wounds that killed them in life.

It made sense. So clearly, Ben couldn’t die because of his powers again. Not that he really had much of a way to test it.)

(This is what he holds onto because if he lets himself think otherwise-)

* * *

Today, Five came back. _Five_. Little, tiny Five, who seems supremely unconcerned by the fact that he was missing for almost twenty years.

Or dead. Like just about everyone in their dysfunctional family had assumed he was, even Klaus.

(When Klaus had dragged Ben from the light, after the shock was over and his brother’s attempt to send Ben back was met with abject failure, he’d asked where Five was.

Klaus had paused for a moment and kept walking.

It seems so callous when Ben thinks about it like this, but he doesn’t know if thirteen-year-old Klaus would have had the presence of mind or even cared enough to get sober long enough to check if he could summon standoffish, rude Five, who condescended to just about everyone except for their father when they all thought he was just missing.

And after that- well, Ben doesn’t know exactly how the mechanics of Klaus’s powers work, but he’s not sure that Klaus could have summoned Ben after he passed into the light.

(He doesn’t know if he wishes that Klaus would have summoned Five if he could. Because Ben hardly wants someone _else_ to be trapped here with him, forced to talk to and trail Klaus like a lost puppy dog, but at the same time-

Some company would be nice.)

* * *

(There’s a future where the Umbrella Academy, Numbers One through Four and ordinary Number Seven, killed by her own powers, end up dead in the wreckage of their childhood home. There’s a future where a thirteen-year-old Five appears in a flash of blue to an apocalyptic wasteland and finds their bodies in the rubble.

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Seven, all accounted for. Except Six.

Number Six, who isn’t dead, but he isn’t alive, either.

Ghosts are a product of obsession, of longings and last regrets, and they pass on when their obsession ends. When the murderer is brought to justice or ends up dead by natural causes, when the heirloom ring is destroyed as the house gets demolished, when the child is old and grown with children of their own and passes peacefully in their sleep.

Number Six is not the product of obsession. Four had to forcibly drag him from the afterlife because Six had been _at peace_.

It would have been too neat, too clean, if Six had managed to pass on when Four did, freed from the mortal world by the passing of his summoner. And the Horror never gets a happy ending. No, rather, he’s still there, tethered to un-life by invisible bonds, unable to reach the afterlife.

There’s a future where Five goes just a little bit insane, wandering a wasteland that used to be a city by himself, falling in love with a mannequin, and obsessing over the equations that can take him home. There’s a future where the Handler offers the Boy a job with the Temps Commission, offers to get him _out_.

There’s a future where Number Six is left alone.)

* * *

The past is probably the nicest place that Ben’s been to in his, ah, career as a ghost. None of the ghosts purposefully seek Klaus out- how could they when the Séance hasn’t even been born yet? His name isn’t spattered across old newspapers and comic books as the boy, then man, who could see ghosts. Instead…

Well, Klaus is a cult leader, instead.

One whose entire reputation, Ben would like to remind his brother, depends on Ben cooperating. And guess what?

_Maybe Ben doesn’t feel like cooperating_.

Maybe he’s sick of watching the world around him without ever interacting with it. Maybe it’s emotional and mental torture to watch Klaus become happier, to get sober, to watch his life just go up, up, up while Ben’s trapped as a ghost. Maybe, now that he knows Klaus can summon him, Ben wants to become physical again.

Maybe, just maybe, he’s fed up with the fact that Klaus will summon Ben to deal with _his_ problems, but the minute Ben wants to talk to a cute girl, Klaus is full of recriminations and denials and reasons why _it just wouldn’t work, Ben, it’s not the end of the world again, so calm down and just… chill_.

(The 1900s might be gloriously free of insane ghosts following Klaus around, but it just makes him feel even lonelier.

Not that the ghosts were great conversationalists, but it was something.)

* * *

(Thirteen years, him and Klaus, stuck together. Necessity and convenience more than anything else that might have mattered, like _love_ or _family_. Ben wasn’t about to leave his only link to the land of the living, and for whatever reason, Klaus couldn’t stop seeing Ben.

Thirteen years is a long time to go on hating somebody for an idiotic mistake made in grief and desperation.

Thirteen years later, Ben still hates Klaus. But Klaus _means_ something to him now, more than when they were just siblings, just best friends, before they became functionally attached at the hip for over a decade.

He thought it had meant something. It did to him.

Clearly, it didn’t to Klaus.)

* * *

Ben _likes_ Klaus’s stupid cult if he’s going to be honest with himself.

There’s that girl, Jill, obviously. With her soft almond eyes and kind voice, with her dark curling locks, with a compassionate heart that loves everyone, that could maybe even love the Horror.

(The media had never been kind to a boy with monsters under his skin and an almost pathological aversion to crowds.)

That, at least, is what he tells Klaus.

But as much as he loves Jill, it’s more than that. It’s the fact that they give up their lives, give up everything they know and love, drag themselves away from their home-

And it’s all to follow Klaus.

Ben would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a measure of kinship to the cult.

(The difference lies in that they _knew_. They made a _choice_ , and they fully understood the consequences.

He didn’t.)

* * *

This will kill him.

And there are hundreds of thousands of things he hasn’t done yet, things that he wants to do, _can_ do, now that Ben knows he can possess Klaus. He would have welcomed an opportunity for death, before.

But now? Now that he finally has a way to die for the second time, Ben _doesn’t want to die_. He wants to run through fields hand-in-hand with Jill, he wants to feel the sun against his skin and water lap at his toes in the pool, he wants to talk to everyone and meet anyone he can and be _acknowledged_ , he wants, he wants, Ben just _wants_.

Except-

Ben’s family is going to die. Diego, Allison, and Klaus, lying in the hallway. Vanya herself. Luther and Five to the apocalypse that’s coming if Ben fails to stop Vanya here and now.

Because he’s the last one. The only one who can finish this problem once and for all and save Vanya, save everyone else.

He steps closer.

(And that’s not his only motivation, far from it, because what if-

What if this is his only chance to reach the afterlife?

Ignored and pushed away is the thought that if this destroys him, if it kills him… will he even go to the afterlife at all? Or will he disappear into nothingness?)

Vanya’s mind is their childhood home, but it’s dark, empty, and a pervasive air of gloom hovers around the rooms.

(Is this how Vanya remembers it? Because Ben thinks back and remembers a childhood filled with personalized training, an abusive father, and an unfeeling, emotionless mother… but he also remembers sneaking out with his siblings at nighttime, slipping into Klaus’s room for sleepovers, and enthusiastically discussing physics and math and science with Luther and Five.

He’d assumed that she had spent time with the others, like Five, because it wasn’t as if Ben spent a terrible amount of time with Allison or Diego either, and each of the siblings had their own preferred groups.

But is that what they had all assumed?)

When he finds his sister, she’s lying curled on the floor in a fetal position. He kneels, places himself more on her level because the last thing she needs is an unfamiliar person towering over her in her own mind.

Well, not unfamiliar because apparently Vanya remembers everything. And, yeah, Ben can see why she’s like this if it all came rushing back, their father, the apocalypse, that manipulative serial killer ex-boyfriend.

So, Ben comforts his sister, talks her out of her mind, and slowly coaxes her to return to her body, out of her mind.

He’s dying, though. Flaking away, piece by piece, into blue sparkles that are stark against the darkness of Vanya’s mind. And if he’s going to die, before he dies, Ben just wants-

All he wants is to _feel_ something, to enjoy sensation he’s barely felt for thirteen long years. Ben asks for a hug.

He gets it, and it’s genuinely one of the best experiences of his life, getting to embrace his sister in his dying moments as he dissolves.

(Ben has one regret, though. And he’s dying, so what does it matter if he lies in order to let Klaus have peace of mind?)

Vanya will take his message, he knows that. He trusts her.

Ben’s dying, disappearing, and he has one last moment to treasure that feeling of holding Vanya before-

* * *

( _Tell Klaus… tell him that I was scared. Too scared to go into the light. It… it wasn’t him that made me stay_.)

**Author's Note:**

> So, a friend and I were chatting about TUA Season 2, and it was revealed to me that not everyone assumed Ben lied? I dunno, that was just the vibe I got from it, but I'd love to hear other people's takes on it, and I definitely see where my friend was coming from.
> 
> I honestly can't remember if ghosts can canonically pass through objects, so if they can... oops? Let me know! I'm also assuming that ghosts can interact with each other since they also don't occupy the same space (which might also be filming limitations) and can touch Klaus. Kinda. Honestly, that one's such a weird touch-and-go because Ben passes through Klaus a lot, but he also picked him up to fake levitating? I'm thinking it might be Klaus semi-manifesting Ben into reality, but not enough for him to be visible, just touch stuff.
> 
> A lot of the rest of these are also vaguely founded in a canon basis! I'm assuming that there's some process by which ghosts get made and others _don't_ since Ben wasn't going to be a ghost until Klaus summoned him. Extrapolating from that, my personal thoughts of TUA ghosts is that while it's not meant to be a specific ghost of any culture, they're vaguely similar to the Japanese yurei (but not anywhere close to identical or even that accurate besides the specific aspects it draws on), with an appearance drawing on Classical Greek beliefs (moment of death), but unlike pretty much either of those, they can't interact with the physical world to accomplish their regrets and last thoughts, which generally leads to them following their obsession around until their obsession is gone, for whatever reason that may be, and then, they get to pass into the afterlife. Since, y'know, all the ghosts we see besides Ben tend to have died violent deaths.  
> If ghosts stuck around for eternity, I feel like we'd see a lot more of them than we do, even with Klaus's usual inability to see ghosts besides Ben. Also, that raises questions, like if ghosts can't pass through each other, what happens when the Earth's surface fills up? Do they start just... stacking???
> 
> Which, interesting because we've seen lots of dropped hints that Ben died a pretty terrible and painful death... but he looks fine? Or he's hiding a whole lot of injuries under that hoodie, but unless he died _in_ that hoodie (unlikely because of implications he died on a mission), Ben has some way to change his appearance that other ghosts don't.  
> Presumably, related to his sanity, yeah?
> 
> The bit about "ghosts going insane" is based on the fact that there's no way that never talking with anyone and going about life completely ignored by everyone can possibly be good for someone's mental state. And, uh, considering the fact that obsessive ghosts probably aren't exactly in a great frame of mind to begin with, well...
> 
> (Please note that my use of the word "obsessive" is not intended in any way to relate to OCD, OCPD, etc. It's used in its, well, definitional term, i.e. extremely fixated and absorbed with one thing.)
> 
> Thanks for reading all the way to the end (and through this copious ghost notes, XD)! Kudos, comments, and the like are greatly appreciated but not strictly necessary.
> 
> (Oh, and Ben's opinion on other characters is not necessarily my opinion on that character.)
> 
> Find my Tumblr [here](https://salviaofficinalis-writes.tumblr.com/) for random thoughts, overanalysis, writing updates, and the occasional criticism of Disney's recent movies.
> 
> (A thought: Klaus and Ben's relationship is fascinating, considering that they seem very close, but with, uh... quite a few lingering _issues_...)


End file.
